On 3/26/23 18:17, secretsnail9 via agora-discussion wrote:
I tried to combat this by increasing the reward, and there were also
discussions of making the races faster when we were talking about
introducing weird horses on the discord. If there were more people playing
the subgame, it might be easier to see exactly where it is lacking, but
right now I'm not sure there's any way to know which parts exactly need to
change.
I think the mix of randomness and convolution, as well as the apparent
impact of timing scams, makes it uninterested to me. It does not feel
like a particularly strategic game, at least in the ways I find strategy
engaging. Maybe I'm misunderstanding it, in which case I'd say that the
design does not convey the gameplay well.
I think I'd rather see an upheaval of the core concepts of the horse rules
than just repealing it. Maybe remove hooves. I was thinking there would be
a lot more use for them, as players not actively participating in the
subgame could use them to help or hinder horses since they build up over
time, and you'd want to cash they in somehow before the race ends and
destroys them. But it seems like that kind of teamwork isn't happening,
which makes sense given agora's inclination for individual strategies over
collusion. So hooves are just a technicality right now, with niche uses.
Collusion is pretty common in competitive gameplay. I think all of the
sets wins involved some level of cooperation and coordination. I just
don't think people currently see the value in it. Either it needs to be
a game where everyone is playing (and therefore assigns value to the
outcome) or where collusion is so obviously strong that it has a quick
return on investment.
R. Lee mentioned it was "the best minigame" e'd ever seen, so i'm wondering
what that's about. Maybe the mechanics seem more interesting than they
actually are. Maybe it fails because the timescale makes it hard to get
invested, and that's hard to see from just reading the rules. As this is a
nomic, though, I'd really like to see the game fixed.
It's a cool and unique idea, I like that about it. Unfortunately, that
doesn't mean it plays well. I think we've all produced something that
just didn't play out as hoped. Shinies was a game that me and o invested
a lot of effort into making, and everyone seemed excited for, and it
just didn't work. But some of the ideas from it (and the failures of it)
influences sets and boatloads. Sometimes it's best to shelve something,
and re-use the best parts or rework it later when we've had some time to
come up with new ideas.
--
nix
Collector, Herald
